OPINION: CYFD needs a commission

The current condition of the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department is an embarrassment. In 2003, it was acknowledged nationally as a model public child welfare agency but since then has slid badly.

In 2003, a federal court ruled that CYFD met all the benchmarks and finally lifted the “Joseph A.” consent decree after two decades of oversight.

While it took 20 years from 1982 to 2003 to gradually rebuild our child welfare services, in 20 years since 2003 almost all those effective benchmarks are no longer met. The department today needs restoration as badly as when “Joseph A.” was filed in 1982.

Here are some of what CYFD had in 2003 but have been lost.

• Citizen review boards met with every child in state custody, their families, foster families, therapists and social workers every six months, prior to custody renewal hearings. Their independent reports gave judges accurate pictures of the cases. Gone.

• Experienced social workers, were in every region of the state as consultants to make sure treatment plans were well-thought out. Gone.

• Multi-disciplinary teams helped develop family treatment plans. Psychologists, attorneys, social workers and counselors met to review what the family needed. Gone.

• Permanency planning was the driving principle for CYFD; strict timelines had to be adhered to. That way, foster children weren’t “lost” in the system. More adoptions were done then than are today.

• All staff working with children and families had to be trained, licensed social workers. Today it's less than 10% of staff. This work requires decisions too complex to hand over to nonprofessionals, who are likely to make poor decisions and quit in frustration. CYFD’s high staff turnover rate results.

There are many other examples of practices, programs and resources that have been lost. How did such effective tools get dropped; can they be restored, and what will it take to make sure the department doesn’t repeat the cycle?

Three things are needed: CYFD leadership needs to be stabilized; the staff needs to be professionalized; and the department needs to open itself to the community, become transparent.

Stability: In the years since “Joseph A.,” three governors have appointed a dozen CYFD secretaries. Frequent changes in leadership explain how valuable programs, practices and resources got lost. There isn’t enough institutional memory to hang on to good practices.

Professionalism: Without professional leadership and expectations, the image of the department suffers, and it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to attract other professionals. That further erodes the image of CYFD and its performance, a vicious cycle.

Transparency: Child welfare is too complex a responsibility for any single state agency to solely own it, making decisions in isolation, and refusing to share information and resources. It is an entire community’s problem, so community partnerships are needed to deal with it. Let air and light in and listen to those who want to help.

Those three changes are unlikely if the governor, any governor, is who appoints CYFD secretaries. Governors change; governors’ priorities change; governors lose confidence in appointees. None of that should affect how child welfare is conducted. These children are our future, and they shouldn’t rely on whims of an elected official for whom child welfare is not a full-time preoccupation.

Rep. Eleanor Chavez’s proposed constitutional amendment to create an independent Child Welfare Commission deserves support. The commission would set policy for CYFD, hire a director who could be repeatedly reappointed if warranted, and hold open commission hearings on policy matters to which the press and public would be invited. A commission would bring stability, professionalism and transparency to CYFD.

Jerry Ortiz y Pino is a former state senator of Albuquerque.